1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to 3D imaging, and more particularly to a system of stereo matching with an adaptive window size.
2. Description Of Related Art
3D imaging is a technique for creating, enhancing or recording the illusion of depth in an image by means of two offset images, i.e., a left image and a right image, which are combined, in the brain of a viewer to give the perception of 3D depth.
Stereo matching technique is a major concern in many applications such as stereo 3D adjustment, multi-view rendering and free view point system. FIG. 1 shows a block diagram illustrating a conventional system 100 of image stereo matching for two-view applications. As shown in FIG. 1, two stereo matching units (SMUs) 11A and 11B are used to obtain depth maps respectively for a left (L) image and a right (R) image. As the SMUs 11A and 11B are calculation intensity, they thus occupy large circuit area or incur great latency.
Moreover, in the conventional system of stereo matching, a matching window for performing the stereo matching generally has a fixed square window size. If the window size is set small, a noisy depth map may ordinarily be obtained. On the other hand, if the window size is set large, a depth map with blurred boundary may usually be obtained.
For the foregoing reasons, a need has arisen to propose a novel system of image stereo matching to overcome deficiencies of the conventional 3D system.